The term to know is the Online Safety Act. Since last summer, any site reachable in Britain that shows nudity has to put an age check in front of it, ID scan included. Plenty of foreign operators now prefer to lock British users out entirely, before anyone makes trouble.
And now, according to the government's plan, software on the phone itself is supposed to recognize what's skin and what isn't. Anyone who has ever watched an algorithm sort things knows just how reliably it tells a nude from hardcore porn.
Here I need to say something about myself that matters to me: I was never political, and I never wanted to be. My pictures are entertainment, not a statement. I want to give you a light moment, a bit of distraction, maybe a smile. That isn't modesty, it's a choice.
Adobe raining on my parade now and then the moment I retouch a nude, and Instagram threatening my existence on the platform with admirable regularity, that, it turns out, was only the beginning. Government stepping in is a whole different level. When a free, democratic country orders grown adults to show ID before they're allowed to look at a naked picture on their own phone, that's when I sit up.
The intent behind it is honorable, I won't dispute that for a second. Teenagers shouldn't stumble into pornography, and nobody should find an unsolicited dick pic in their inbox. It's just that laws like this rarely solve things with a scalpel. A filter built to detect skin can't tell a creepy snapshot from a carefully composed nude, so when in doubt it throws out both.
This is called overblocking, and it reliably hits exactly the people it was least meant for.
Trickier still is the effect nobody has to mandate: the chilling effect. When the rules are vague and the penalties steep, people start censoring themselves just to be safe. Better one picture fewer, better a little tamer, better not to upload at all. That anticipatory obedience is exactly where I've worked for a long time now, whenever I produce content for social media (or skip posting altogether).
It's the opposite of what I actually want: a little lightness, without constantly glancing over my shoulder.